Archive for April, 2012

When I tell friends lately that I’ve been working on painting a house, I have to follow that with an explanation that this is the kind of one you live in.

For the last few months I’ve been trying to get the property ready to place on the market and it’s involved quite a bit of remodeling including painting the interior. The “professional” painter we hired left us with an unsatisfactory job that I’ve been spending a great deal of time finishing up. She had given us a good price but with sloppy results. Oh well, you get what you pay for.

Unfortunately, one of the things I’ve learned over the years with handling emulsion paints, such as latex house paint, is that it dries at a different value from when it’s wet. In this case the painter had left some areas on the wall unpainted. When I took paint samples to the store that I’d scraped off the windows, the color looked right in the can, but dried a darker shade on the wall. The only way to use that paint as-is would be to repaint the whole wall. Good news is I also had some white, so putting my art training to work I went back and forth a few times with my hand mixtures until I finally got it to dry at the correct shade. The house is now finished and cleaned out. We should be placing up our listing next week.

Yesterday, as my friend Jeni and I walked along a hiking trail, she wanted to rest her tired feet. “You rest, I’ll draw,” says I. This is the result, finishing it up later at home. It’s graphite on 8.5×11 inch white rag paper.

There’s no better way to shake off the rust from not having drawn in awhile than to just dip your brush in some ink and have at it. No tentative pencil sketch layout, no corrections, just start drawing in ink like you know what you’re doing.

Here’s my result from yesterday’s sketching. This is a new friend, Vanessa, texting someone at a local cafe. Sumi ink on Bristol paper, 11×14 inches.

I should remind old viewers of this site, as well as point out to new ones, that it is possible to purchase high quality prints of my artwork online. There are links on the right of this page under “Blogroll.”

I’ve been using two main print fullfillment sites for quite awhile now, Imagekind and Redbubble. Both offer excellent service and good quality. A small percentage of each purchase also comes back to me, which you might appreciate and I certainly do. When you browse through my portfolio on those sites you can view more finished artwork than I currently have up on my own website, so that offers an added benefit. Once you place an order they’ll ship the prints directly, either to you or as a gift to someone else, no later than the next business day. You have several options of paper or canvas in various sizes, mats or frames, even postcards and calendars. I urge you to check them out, and please consider placing an order.

A few months ago I also started trying out the print site FineartAmerica. I’ve been impressed with their quality so far, and may be uploading more work there if sales increase.

This will be where I stop on this one, at least for now. The only change here was to add a brighter and more saturated yellow to the comforter where the light was hitting it, and to tweak the edges around those areas. I darkened the table on the right side a bit as well. I don’t want to overwork it at this point so I’ll just put her to bed, so to speak.

I received word yesterday from the Live Oak Art Center that the above painting, “Girls in a Park,” was accepted into their upcoming juried show, opening in late May. Nothing like some good news to get those creative juices flowing again. Now if I could only get my taxes done, so I can get back to work.

Now I’ve painted her hair and the lamp on the right side. I also adjusted the value of the chair on the left since all that bright yellow was making it look too dark. I still want to brighten up the yellow of the comforter, but will wait for some of the paint to dry more so I don’t mess anything up.